Everybody deserves a second chance, really?
24th June 2019 · 0 Comments
Conservative media and some mainstream media outlets are leading the clarion call for Harvard University to give Kyle Kashuv a second chance. Harvard recently admitted then rescinded its invitation to high school senior, Kyle Kashuv, 18, a Parkland School shooting survivor, to matriculate through its ivy league towers. The university declined to admit the young Republican because of racial slurs he posted on social media when he was 16. In his posts, he unleashed a tirade against African Americans calling them niggers and bitches, all the way through.
At 18 years old, Kashuv’s trajectory as a rising millennial Republican star and future elected official was certain, until the Harvard rejection.
“Everybody deserves a second chance,” said one mainstream media television analyst. White evangelicals rushed to quote Jesus: “None is without sin;” others have said; “No one’s perfect and this young man should be forgiven, if this is a nation that upholds Christian values.”
And taking what Kashuv said at face value, one would be inclined to say Harvard should give Kashuv a second chance. After all, the word nigger has been popularized in hip hop culture and Kashuv has first amendment rights like everyone else. Just because his speech was politically incorrect, what harm was done?
Everybody deserves a second chance? How about a first chance? How about due process?
Did Dravon Ames, 22, and Iesha Harper, 24, his pregnant fiancée and their young children, deserve a chance to exercise their constitutional rights before being arrested on suspicion of shoplifting? Cell phone videos surfaced showing one police officer threatening to shoot them. Police didn’t give Harper any opportunity to explain that she didn’t notice that her four-year-old daughter took a doll from the Family Dollar Store.
Did Stephanie Washington, the unarmed 22-year-old woman shot by police on April 16 in New Haven, Connecticut, get a chance to exercise her first amendment rights? Authorities released partial body-camera footage showing cops unleashing a barrage of bullets on a car she was in despite the driver, her boyfriend, complying with orders to come out with his hands up. Washington survived the shooting.
Did the “Exonerated Central Park 5” have any chance to tell their truth before cops, as it traditionally is with Black people, decided they were guilty before proven innocent?
Claiming to be embarrassed and contrite for the racial slurs he wrote as a 16-year old, Kashuv did write a letter of apology and reached out to Harvard’s Office of Diversity to plead his case. When he received a passive thank you and best wishes for his future from the university, Kashuv unleashed a Twitter tirade, using Trump’s ‘whataboutism-deflection” technique.
“Throughout its history, Harvard’s faculty has included slave owners, segregationists, bigots and anti-Semites. If Harvard is suggesting that growth isn’t possible and that our past defines our future, then Harvard is an inherently racist institution. But I don’t believe that,” Kashuv tweeted.
If one were to follow biblical teachings, Kashuv should be forgiven. But if Bible tenants were followed by people in power, we wouldn’t have mass incarceration, we wouldn’t be putting children in cages on the border or adults in prison camps or trying to start a war with Iran.
So, technically, second chances should be given only to those who deserve and earn them.
A cursory look at his background indicates that Kashuv might not be deserving of a second chance by Harvard University.
Given the actions he’s taken and has been involved in, Kashuv can be viewed as a racist and white supremacist. Kashuv visited the White House in March 2018 and met with Melania Trump and Donald Trump. And while his fellow Parkland shooting survivors were walking out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in April 2018, to demand action on gun reform, Kashuv hosted a livestream with conservative commentators, who discussed their support of the Second Amendment. There are also photos of Kashuv at an NRA event.
Most egregious, however, was Kashuv’s affiliation with Turning Point USA (TPUSA). He apparently stepped down as the group’s director of high school outreach after videos surfaced of members declaring “white power” and saying racist slurs. In April 2018, HuffPost discovered a cache of racist comments made by several TPUSA members.
In one viral video, the leader of the Las Vegas chapter of TPUSA, University of Nevada student Riley Grisar, was seen giving the Alt-Right “OK” sign while a friend screams, “We’re gonna run the world! White Power! Fuck N*****s!” and he was seen giving the same hand sign at a recent “Build the Wall” rally.
TPUSA’s website banner screams: “Winning the Culture War,” but claims it is a 501c(3) non-profit organization founded on June 5, 2012 by Charlie Kirk, for purely patriotic reasons: “The organization’s mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”
Charlie Kirk’s father, Robert W. Kirk, was the project architect manager for Trump Tower in New York. Charlie joined the Tea Party in 2010. He also wrote a piece for Breitbart, a white supremacy online rag founded by Steve Bannon; complaining about “liberal bias” in high school economics textbooks..
Clearly, a new generation of fascists, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists are unapologetically being indoctrinated and groomed to take over for the likes of Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Ted Cruz, who have been, behind the scenes, rebuilding Hitler’s New World Order, where whites remain in control of the lion share of the world’s wealth. Kyle Kashuv is being groomed to lead the effort for his generation.
Yes, second chances should be given. The question is, then, does Kyle Kashuv deserve a second chance at Harvard University?
The answer is a resounding NO!
This article originally published in the June 24, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
